


Lust

by themus



Series: 7 Deadly Sins [6]
Category: The OC
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Language, Extremely Dubious Consent, Gen, Heavy Angst, Non-Explicit Sex, Running Away, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-17
Updated: 2008-04-17
Packaged: 2019-02-23 02:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13180362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themus/pseuds/themus
Summary: Seth never stopped Ryan from running away at the beginning of 102 The Model Home.





	Lust

**LUST:**  

  _a passionate or overmastering desire or craving._

 

 

The buildings are dark - half-formed concrete monstrosities staring down with rows of blank, windowless eyes. They loom under the stark moonlight, timber frames casting skeleton shadows of tar black against bone white cement.  
  
The construction crew left hours ago, leaving shivering tarpaulins and the abandoned carcasses of machinery scattered across the overturned landscape. The men are all at home now, with warm dinners and bickering children, or at a bar, sharing drinks over a friendly game of pool.  
  
And Ed Harvey is chasing a ghost.  
  
The room is black inside - a heavy ebony that has seeped into every corner, shifting into sullen shades of grey as it nears the single, coverless window and the sloppy white moonlight which splashes through it.  
  
For a moment Ed thinks he's in the wrong place, that it was his imagination only that saw a disturbance in the dust and grit every morning - the curled shape of a small body wiping the concrete clean. And then he catches a glint; the moonlight skittering on the edge of metal deep in the corner of the room. There's a patch of darkness next to it that doesn't quite fit with the rest and he focuses on it. He blinks, trying to resolve it into form, to put a face to the nameless ghost that has been haunting this place for so many weeks; the person who left apple cores on the transom of the curtain wall one night and a set of footprints many sizes too small imprinted hard in the packed earth by the site's boundary fence.  
  
His ghost. His mystery. Close enough to touch and it's still nothing but a formless shadow.  
  
"You a cop?" The voice is low and rough-edged. It's a dehydrated sound, rasping over a dry tongue and lips and it startles Ed. He shifts off balance, stepping forward almost involuntarily as he steadies himself, instantly shrouded in the tangible blackness of the room.  
  
"No, I'm not a cop," he answers, slowly, aware that any wrong word will burst this moment, ruin his chance. "I work here, actually." He fades out, embarrassed by the sound of his lone voice and the way it rebounds, larger than life, from the bare walls.  
  
From far above comes the telltale drone and whistle of a plane coming in to land - New York, Chicago, the red-eye from Paris - and Ed feels the air shake from the noise as it passes overhead. Then it's gone and the room is suddenly brighter, the glow of moonlight washing back over the floor until it hits the base of the wall. It flicks back a cold neon from dirty white sneakers, a deeper husky blue from the creases of an over-large sweatshirt out of which extends a pale hand, gripping the handle of a knife.  
  
"You work here," the words are sneered in disbelief, and it distracts Ed enough from the shock of the blade that he looks up, catching the intensity of a wide-eyed glare. "And you're here to do what? Pour concrete? You do a lot of construction at night all by yourself?" It's spat in defensive anger, rage trembling in air so cold that Ed can see his own breath now, appearing in silver clouds where the light touches it.  
  
The knife shifts again as the kid changes grip and the reflection bounces onto the far wall.  
  
Ed has to ask himself what he's doing here, why he hasn't surrendered and left, why he's standing here having a knife pointed at him by this kid. This kid that he doesn't know.  
  
Except that's exactly why he's here. Because he has found food wrappings, sometimes, an empty bottle of water, but never needles or smashed beer bottles or puddles of urine. Because the night that Ed accidentally left his trailer open this kid he doesn't know got in and read the plans, tracing the lines of the blueprint with dirt-smudged fingers and correcting – in pencil so light that it almost went unnoticed - the tiny mistake Ed himself hadn't spotted for two whole days.  
  
And the money he left out – a little over forty dollars in rumpled fives and ones – was left untouched, wedged under the mug of pens on his desk.  
  
“Actually, I just came here to see you,” he says, shrugging with his hands wide from his body. Because a mind that brilliant, sleeping rough in a roofless building every night . . . it is wrong and fascinating and terrible. And Ed needed to see for himself. “I brought you some food,” he remembers, digging into the pocket of his grey work jacket for the sandwich and holding it out at arm's length, the plastic wrapping crinkling crisply in his grip.  
  
The kid hesitates when he sees it, running a pale pink tongue along his bottom lip, eyes shifting quickly from Ed to his outstretched arm and back again.  
  
“It's already paid for,” Ed says. “Someone needs to eat it.”  
  
There are a few moments more of quiet deliberation before the kid steps forward and snatches the food from him, backing up a pace immediately, the knife still held out unwaveringly. The kid's eyes are searching Ed even as he nods a perfunctory 'thank you', and Ed feels incredibly self-conscious – as if he is playing a game in which only his opponent knows the rules.  
  
He doesn't move, barely dares to breathe, as the kid tears into the sandwich packaging with his teeth, devouring the food without stopping to taste it, the sharp line of his shoulders telling Ed that all his muscles are tensed to spring.  
  
Ed can't believe he is here. But where else should he be? At home with a microwave meal for one? He is tired of everything: tired of spending days scouring over plans and nights alone with only the television and a potted plant for company. He's tired of being outside everything, separated from the world by an invisible wall.  
  
And this kid – this ghost – read the blueprints, understood them. And didn't steal, even though he could have, easily.  There is something real about this ghost, this room, that isn't there as he drags through the long, lonely days and nights; the deadened routine that is his life.  
  
The kid stops eating abruptly, taking time to breathe deep lungfuls of the freezing clean air. Ed can hear the soft whisper of fabric shifting against itself.  
  
They are seven long miles north of the city limits here, and streets away from the yearling estates on this burgeoning new development, where young businessmen are just beginning to settle down with their families. The result is a peculiar silence, disguised during the daylight hours by the grinding of machinery and the yelling of men, which returns flatly at sunset, filling the space possessively like a cat returning home, as if it has simply been waiting all those hours.  
  
“Why are you doing this?” the kid asks, breaking the quiet with a low voice. There's a desperate quality to it that is beginning to show through now, his veneer of toughness quickly thinning and wearing away.  
  
Ed doesn't know how to answer that, the real question behind it, so he shrugs. “I figured you'd probably be hungry, and I really don't have anywhere to be.” It's not as if there is anyone to miss him, not even his potted plant, nor the plastic goldfish which bobs in its plastic tank on his end table.  
  
“That's not what I meant,” the kid snaps back.  
  
“I know.” He shrugs again, trying to maintain an air of casual ease, even though there is nothing casual about this situation.  
  
The cold is beginning to eat up through his shoes from the concrete floor and whenever he shifts his weight, uncomfortable under the sharp inspection of this kid, the treads scrape awkwardly against the rough surface.  
  
“What brought you all the way out here?” Ed asks, feeling an acute need to fill the restrictive silence, to extend this time as long as possible. And he wants to know why this kid chose to stay in the middle of nowhere instead of hanging around downtown like all the other homeless people. It's another anomaly that Ed can't figure out. Another mystery to solve. Another lure. Another reason why he is here now, instead of at home with his tattered copy of _The Lovely Bones_.  
  
“A mistake,” the kid replies immediately, grimacing angrily at himself as he wipes a hand over his mouth, smearing away the remains of the french mustard along the backs of his fingers. It stains one of his knuckles brown and it looks like blood in the sallow light, dried thick.  
  
Another plane passes overhead, this time from the west, probably an internal flight stuffed to the brim with people coming home for the holidays, all looking forward to a weekend full of food and family feuds, while Ed eats dry microwaved turkey and this kid, if he's lucky, manages to scrounge an equally dry meal at the local shelter.  When the noise finally disappears, fading from a rumble to a quivering hum, the silence is all the more noticeable for its absence and Ed's own awkwardness is suddenly palpable. And despite logic telling him that he has much more right to be here, he feels as if he is the trespasser, the unwanted presence.  
  
He doesn't know what else to say, doesn't really know what else he came here to do, so Ed shrugs his arms nervously and jerks his head toward the doorway. “I guess I ought to go. But I'll bring you some more food tomorrow,” he says. This is the first time he's had a connection with a real human being for so long . . . and he can't let go of it. Not yet.  
  
The kid makes a frustrated noise, shaking his head, matching Ed pace for pace as he moves. “Are you gonna tell anyone?”  
  
“Of course not. Why would I?”  
  
There's no response to that, but the silence speaks for him.  Why _wouldn't_ you?  
  
"I don't like owing people," the kid says next and there's a shift in his expression now, hard angry lines creasing into anxiety.  
  
“You don't owe me.”  
  
“Yes,” the kid hisses, “yes, I do.”  
  
The knife has vanished, Ed notices, and the kid's hands are empty. Ed barely has time to wonder when it disappeared before the kid is striding forward suddenly, breathing hard as if he has just finished running a race. And then he is right in front of Ed. Close enough that Ed can feel the warmth from his body – a small sphere of heat spreading outwards, battling against the biting cold in the grey room. Close enough that his breath quivers against Ed's neck and those blue eyes are swift bright shards of colour even under the bleached moonlight.  
  
Suddenly the kid's hands are on his belt, fumbling with the buckle, and Ed is so shocked that he can't move, not until the brown leather pops free of the pin and _then_ he staggers backward a step, grabbing at the thin wrists and holding them, frozen, with the fingers still wrapped around the bright steel. His hands span the bony joints easily, fingertips pressing against the veins under icy smooth skin.  
  
The kid is tensed in front of him, head down, shoulders shaking as he heaves breath – a hoarse, loud noise in the otherwise unnaturally quiet space.  
  
Ed wants to pull away completely, and yet he doesn't want to pull away. He wants to push the kid's hands from him, but he doesn't want to lose the touch.  He hasn't been touched in so long, and his body is yearning for someone else's warmth, and all measure of self-control is gone, flown out of the room and beyond retrieval.  
  
“What are you doing?” he manages to choke out. The words barely escape intact because this is too right, too wrong, too twisted and there's nothing about this pale, emaciated kid that makes Ed feel even remotely sexual.  
  
And yet he can't let go. He can't _not_ let go.  
  
“I can't owe you, don't you understand?” The kid breathes the sudden rush of words, spitting them in Ed's face with a glare so intense he can feel it burning against his skin. “I can't afford for you to walk out of here and suddenly decide you have a conscience. And this is all I've got left,” he adds, so quiet that Ed almost doesn't catch it. The kid's pulse is hammering under his fingers – the rhythm straining and irregular.  
  
“You don't need to do this.”  
  
He can't say he doesn't want this, even though he doesn't, and he _does_ , and he _needs_ it, and Ed feels the shame blazing inside him.  
  
"Don't tell me you don't want it,” the kid sneers acerbically, echoing his thoughts. “I see the way you're looking at me; like I'm the fucking unicorn you've been chasing."  
  
The words are heavy, weighting him down, and Ed closes his eyes. Under his hands, the kid tenses, gripping the leather of his belt harder again, pressing fingers against stiff denim until Ed lets go, dropping his arms to his sides, curling his own fingers into fists, tilting his head away at the treacherous scrape of fabric.  
  
And five minutes, ten, a lifetime later when he walks out, leaving the kid kneeling huddled on the floor, Ed pretends that he is leaving the guilt behind, too; that the cold tracks on his face are not the traces of condemning tears, and that the boy is trembling only because of the chill November air.  
  



End file.
